


The Muggle Magic of the Waters of Gambia

by writerkenna



Series: Within Those Nineteen Years [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coming of Age, Discussion of Abortion, Fluff and Angst, Moving In Together, Multi, Pregnancy, Sex, Unplanned Pregnancy, for all parties involved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:55:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21830074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerkenna/pseuds/writerkenna
Summary: A drunken night out. A poorly performed spell. A girl who can't be held down. A boy who can't seem to get himself to move. And now, coming rapidly too fast for Neville or Luna to handle, a baby. One they can't seem to make a choice on.ON TEMP HIATUS
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood, Seamus Finnigan/Dean Thomas
Series: Within Those Nineteen Years [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1299089
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. BarHopping

**Author's Note:**

> So this can be either read as a continuation to part 1 in this series, Hold Me Until I Don't Hurt, or on it's own. Enjoy!

Neville is physically holding himself back from telling Luna he loves her. 

He has been for quite some time now. About three months and five days, he thinks, since her first visit back home after a month of travels through indeterminate parts of Guinea, Mali, and Niger. 

Three months and five days of stuffing biscuits in his mouth to avoid spilling something out when Luna was laughing, well more like snorting, into her mug of jasmine tea over a joke he had made about the Prophet piece on the DA’s hottest members and where they are now (aside from Harry, Neville had one of the bigger spots). Of sucking in his lips and biting down just not to yell it out during sex. Of pulling his wand out when writing her letters to erase his endless P.S I love you’s, P.S Please return to me soon, P.S I can’t think about anything but the way you look at me when I show you my herbology journals and how your nose scrunches when you’re working on a piece for the Quibbler and all your long skirts that you wear with your big shirts and your jokes that always take me a good minute to understand, and I might be seriously head over heels, please send help. 

“F-faster,” Luna moans. Neville responds with vigor. He has her on her side, hips rubbing his as he cups her breast and hisses little curses into her hair. Luna is moaning a great deal, with toes twitching and lips curling, and Neville feels like they are finally getting great at this. 

They finish in cacophony of gasps and huffs of hot breath on sweaty bodies. Once he has scourgifyed them both, Luna is slipping out of his arms and into one of his jumpers she had taken when she visited in October. 

“You know, I’m beginning to think you just come round for the sex,” Neville says with his head propped up on a bent arm. He is mostly kidding, though he does wish they were able to have more time to talk. When Luna comes home, the longest she ever stays is five days, though normally it is only one or two, just time for lunch with Ginny and Harry, dinner with her dad, and a night with Neville. Luna smirks at him through the bundle of her scarf.

“Well, of course, Neville. You are one of the most eligible and available bachelors of the DA, correct?” She lowers herself down to Neville as he huffs at her and kisses him with a grin. He laughs when she pulls away, though his heart does sink. Available? He considers himself mostly taken by her, but maybe the feeling isn’t mutual. 

“Some people may say that, I suppose.” He shrugs and laces a finger through the loops of her denim trousers. Luna resists for a moment before squeezing herself tight against his bare chest. 

“You’re going to the pre-Christmas, joke shop re-opening, Dean’s return to England bar-hopping thing tomorrow, right?” Neville asks. He stops himself short of saying ‘I won’t go if you’re not’, because that is a bit pathetic, and rude to Dean, as well, who he hasn’t seen in a full year, outside of the Battle, which hardly counts. 

“Only if you’ll buy me some fancy drink, like Daisyroot Draught with the little flowers on top, or-or, um, spiced cider with passion fruit froth. Will you?” Luna pushes against him more and more as she speaks, until the tip of her nose is squashing his. 

“Sure,” Neville says, looking only at her lips. He kisses her quick. 

“I’ll go, then,” Luna says against his mouth, before pulling back and running a hand down his cheek, “and I really must leave. I’m supposed to meet father for dinner with my Aunt Allisandria. Have I told you about her? She studies unreadable runes and hieroglyphics in magical texts. It is fascinating!” 

“It sounds like it.” It is a half truth, since Neville could care less about hieroglyphics, but Luna’s voice is enough to keep most of his attention on nearly anything. 

Luna kisses him once more and then tosses on her brown robe. She issues Neville a toothy grin and wave before aparating away. 

The bar-hopping starts in a little hole in the wall place Ginny knows, with brick walls and scratched wooden stools. Neville likes it for the house brewed beer, the smell of its large crackling fire, and the pine tree shoved in the corner that is endearingly hand-decorated by the owners. 

Luna is across the room, deep in some heavily intense conversation with Dean. Dean, for being on the run for months and locked in a dungeon for a good part of it, looks surprisingly fit. He had been wearing a thick robe when he arrived, but once that has been taken off, the body that is residing under it, trim and toned and dark, is making Neville self-conscious. Jealousy bubbles in his stomach and he starts despising the amount of time Dean and Luna had spent at Shell Cottage, which just makes him sick with himself over thinking that. Still, he can't keep from staring as he knocks back a heavy swig of beer.

“Ginny.” Ginny turns over her shoulder to Neville. Her drink, red and sweet smelling, is brimming with smoke at the top and she blows it off.

“Yeah?”

“Does, uh . . . Dean doesn’t like Luna, does he?” Neville asks, and Ginny snots a laugh. He frowns, “It’s just, they are talking so much, though, and-”

“No, I’m almost completely sure that Dean doesn’t like Luna. Like more than 99% sure, honestly,” Ginny grins. Neville quirks a brow at her and sighs into his drink when all she does is shrug knowingly. He studies Luna once again. She is playing with a tassel on her purse without looking at, looking enthralled in whatever Dean is going on about. 

“Luna called me available. What does that mean? Does it mean she is seeing other people? I had thought she fancied me and we’ve been writing letters, so-” 

“Neville,” Ginny interrupts, hand on his shoulder. He slumps, “Luna is . . . she just says things. She doesn’t really think about what it means. I figured you’d’ve caught on to that by now.” 

“Right,” Neville says. He puts on a smile and nods. Ginny  _ is _ right, he supposes. Luna has perpetually been a jumble of half-articulated thoughts, riddles delivered through chuckles, and information on subtopics Neville can never hope to comprehend. It has been that way since Neville met her, before that as well presumably. He hoped it would be different for him, somehow. That bringing her into his bed would dissolve all her secrets. 

Ginny elbows Neville and he looks up to see Luna bounding over. Ginny gives him a smirk and pushes off the bar towards Harry.

“So, what drink am I getting, love?” Luna asks. Neville scans the shelves of liquor over Luna’s head, some bubbling, some hissing. 

“Hot pear cider with a shining charm on it?” The drink is on the weekly special list, and the glittering chalk drawing seems fantismacal enough to draw Luna in. She grins up at Neville over her shoulder.

Both of them satisfied with their drinks, Luna’s a mingling of steam and sparkle and Neville’s a dark ale, he takes them to a secluded booth, away from the eyes of Dean. 

“Tell me about, um . . .” Neville trails off, the destinations getting more and more mingled in his head. He is sure it was Dakar last, but Gambia has just as good of a chance. 

“Gambia,” Luna finishes for him, “was outstanding. The muggles there, they run a crocodile pool. And women, they come to the pool for fertility and luck. So, of course, I dip my toes in at the edge, and-”

“You went into crocodile infested waters for a chance at luck?” Neville bounds in. He is not surprised in even the slightest, but he likes to play the shock, because it means Luna will play up the scandal, the adventure, the insanity, and then Neville can play the amazement. Well, not really playing that part, since she does amaze him at every turn, but it’s nonetheless a part of the game, and he plays his part well. 

“You’re not letting me get to the good part! Alright, toes in water, stepping forward through the whole thick of it, and one of the crocodiles swims up, so-”

“Luna!” 

She smiles at his indignation, indulgent and unabashed in her joy to get that response. In moments like that, Neville thinks, just maybe, she knows how utterly wild she is. 

“I am still here, am I not? So, quite obviously, I wasn’t eaten. No need to go to hysterics,” Luna chastises and Neville concedes with a nod, “So, I’m face to face with the crocodile and now I’ve actually emassed a crowd. Natives and tourists alike seeing what I’ll do. Well, I pull out my wand, very discreetly, mind you, lots of muggles around, and mutter a disillusionment charm to place on the crocodile. The spell works, the crocodile goes back to its grotto, and the crowd starts cheering. For the next week I’m there, I’m basically the messiah of the town.”

“Only you would go head to head with a man-eating animal and come out worshiped,” Neville says as Luna tosses her hair over her shoulder. 

“I don’t know. I think you could, too. You’ve always had a skill with defensive spells.”

“Uh, yeah, maybe, I don’t know,” Neville mumbles back, his eyes on the table. The invitation is obvious. It isn’t the first time he notices her hinting, as it came in her letters, too, for a while, the subtle pushes for him to join her world tour. Neville should be pleased, actually, that Luna wants him to follow her across the globe, but when he thinks of leaving home for the unknown, for deserted plains and the isolation of Luna’s search for probably fake animals, he is not thankful. 

“Alright, next bar, next bar,” Hermione rushes as she comes up to their table, waving Neville up and then Luna when she just stares up with wide eyes and a foggy grin. She’s probably the slightest little bit drunk already, which makes Neville think he should either sober himself or catch up. Hermione huffs at her, “Seamus has pissed off two seperate bartenders. Oh Merlin, that boy is the most-”

“You worry too much. You should have a drink, or maybe two,” Luna glides as she stands, hand flitting across Hermione’s shoulder as she passes her on the way to grab her coat. Neville stays by the table to watch Hermione’s reaction, which is worth it, slack jawed and hands still out in front of her in their gesture.

“I . . .” she trails.

“Er, sorry,” Neville says under a suppressed laugh, feeling somehow responsible for Luna’s outbursts because of his love for her. Also, he agrees, “Well, uh, bit true, though, isn’t?”

“Neville!” Hermione sputters but, as they catch eyes and Neville loses the battle with a chuckle, she giggles, too. Hermione laughing at herself, which is incredibly rare, makes Neville wonder if they are all drunk as a whole, maybe not on the alcohol itself yet, but on being together, on no school for most of them, on no more people trying to kill them. Well, not at the moment, that is, but Seamus is a feisty drunk.

The next bar is Dean’s pick, which makes Neville weary on instinct, because jealousy is a mighty beast that makes people dumb and angry at their friends for no reason. It’s a wizarding bar with muggle alcohol and music, and well, that seems pointless. Not knowing the muggle songs does give him an excuse not to dance, though, which he doesn’t do in public since Malfoy mocked him endlessly about it at the Yule Ball.

Almost as soon as they get there, which takes a while since everyone is a challenge for Hermione to corral, Luna is lost from him.

“Padma is absolutely gutted over someone she’s been seeing and her and Pavarti are fighting, so I’m going to go speak with her on the terrace. Have some drinks for me,” she says as she gives a kiss to Neville’s cheek. He nods Luna off with a smile, though he’s sure he will be awkward without her to speak to. Well, they are, according to her, not dating, so he supposes he has no claims to her time.

Neville follows Luna’s orders by finding himself sat in between George and Ron, who both order a new drink every ten or fifteen minutes. Neville’s not sure if the drinking is an ingrained Weasley trait, or reactionary to the loss of Fred. Whatever it may be, Neville is not matching their speed but is trying, which leads to a tossing stomach and a foggy head after a half hour in the seat. 

“You kn-know what I think?” Ron slurs, leaning back so he’s looking at Neville and George at once.

“Huh?” Neville says.

“Mione should be, fuckin, ah, Minister of Magic. Right?” Ron widens his eyes at both of them, waiting for some sort of quick, unanimous agreement on his statement. He gets a shrug from Neville and rasp of laughs from George, who only really laughs like that, like Fred’s laugh, when he’s been drinking a lot. 

“No, seriously, she-she should! Best pick for it, really. She’s the literal smartest, just-just ever! I . . . I, she’s incredible, she is.” Ron’s voice starts to dip at the end of his ramble, going into an inquisitive and slightly muddled smile as he drifted into his own head. Neville starts to laugh along with George, but quiets himself after a moment, feeling guilty. His head is heavy and his eyes are glazing if he doesn’t focus on making them not. Given another drink or two, he’ll probably be going on drunken tangents of the many greatnesses of Luna to anyone who will listen. 

“And-and, you, mate!” Ron yelps, and Neville, as he recenters on the conversation, is beyond surprised to find Ron’s gesturing towards him. He fixes is posture in response to the attention, “Neville, oh man, with the DA, and fighting the Carrows, and you’ve got those muscles now-what?”

George is choking on his laughs by this point, tipping back in his chair and angling dangerously close to the ground. Neville is flushed all the way across his cheeks. His muscles are not as developed as they were a few months ago at Hogwarts, though still there, sort of, and his stomach is refilling to its former pudginess. He begins to stand shakily. 

“Um, thanks. Yea, uh. Gotta pee,” he mumbles, getting done with Ron’s lovey drunkenness and immensely worried he will stick his attention on him for longer. He does actually have to pee, as well. 

The bar is stuffed with a pre-Christmas crowd and Neville’s alcohol catches up with him as he shoves through people to the toilets, sweaty men and women who have had too much to drink fall against him as maneuvers. By the time he’s through, it’s like he’s walked a mile.

Once he’s at the men’s room door and about to push it open, he hesitates, listening to the two voices going back and forth on the other side. He can’t make out the words, door too thick, and he’s too out of it in general, but he can tell it’s rather intense and heavy, whispers coming in on top of each other and lots of huffed sighs. He stays outside for another thirty seconds or so, but then he’s going to piss himself, so he pushes in.

The source of the voices are Dean, who Neville regrets being jealous of because he looks harrowed and at a loss, and Seamus, red faced and pointing a finger to the center of Dean’s chest. 

“And, ya know what? I reckon you don’t even like me, like that, really, cause you don’t even-” Seamus is cut off by Dean, quite effectively, Neville notes with surprise, when Dean shakes out his shoulders and then, with a new determination, crashes his lips down onto Seamus’s. 

They still don’t notice Neville, standing there in a thick puddle of awkward uncertainty and aggressive shock followed shortly by revelation of many missed clues while holding in his urine. He supposes he doesn’t have to worry about Dean stealing Luna. Once Seamus’s hands, which had moved to Dean’s hips a few seconds after the kiss attack occurred, start wandering up Dean’s back under his shirt, Neville clears his throat.

Dean and Seamus both shoot to look at him, then jolt out of each other’s holds with blotchy, stricken faces. Dean sucks in a gulp of air as his hand rises to cover his slick lips and turns on his heels towards the wall, away from Neville. Seamus, however, is staring right at him, and he’s angry, maybe, or embarrassed, or possibly even asking for help. Neville is the one to break that eye contact. 

“Er, well, I’ve got to pee, but I guess I could go outside if you two-”

“Just piss, mate,” Seamus mutters as he shoves past Neville, shoulders colliding. Dean hesitates, eyes glinting for half a second over Neville, then he rushes out, too. 

“Shit,” Neville says to himself once he is alone. He moves to one of the urinals and realizes, as he leans a palm against the wall and goes, he is very buzzed and things are getting weird. He should find Luna soon. 

As he leaves the bathroom, Seamus is there at the door to accost him. 

“I’m not a poof, just so ya know,” Seamus says with a desperate urgency, his hand clutched around Neville’s arm like he’s about to shake him down. Maybe he is. 

“Okay, okay.” Neville yanks his arm away and Seamus deflates as he does. He shrinks away to an open table nearby and, after a moment of deliberation, Neville follows after him and sits.

“Maybe I am . . .” Seamus trails, “maybe I am . . . gay, I don’t know. It’s weird. Who knows. Dean doesn’t, I’ll tell ya.”

“Oh,” Neville says. He is flushed nearly as red as Seamus. This doesn’t feel like the sort of secrets he should be sharing in, better suited for someone with even a passing emotional intelligence. His eyes dart around for such a person. Luna is entering from the patio with a puffy-eyed Padma, thank Merlin. She can save him. He turns back to Seamus, who is pulling his hands red.

“It’s only because . . . . well, look, Dean was gone for all of last year, and that was bloody awful. Felt like could barely keep me fuckin’ head on straight without him. And then he came back, and we found each other, and I . . . we realized we like snogging each other.” 

“So, um, this has been going on for a while then?” Neville asks.

“Yeah. Since the battle, pretty much.”

Neville remembers those intense days following the war, of both crazed joy and relief as well as smothering grief. Couples, new and old, held each other tighter. Luna shone even brighter to him. He shouldn’t be surprised Dean and Seamus had found each other then. They were always uncommonly close in school.

“It’s like, it took him going away to realize what I was missing. Once he was back, well, wasn’t gonna just let him go. Ya know?” Seamus says down to the table and Neville finds himself caught on Luna again. She smiles back to him as she notices his stare, her cheeks prickled with red from the frost outside. Her being home is his best Christmas gift, but soon enough, she will be off again. Neville doesn’t even know when she’ll be home next, when he will get the joy of her laugh or the peculiarity of her comments again.

“Yes, I know,” Neville replies. 

“Ah, don’t tell anyone else yet. We haven’t . . . Dean and I, um, we’re just having some fun, I guess,” Seamus says, his voice dropping off at the end. Dean has yet to join them in the conversation, though Neville thinks he should be here, for Seamus’s sake. Pity swarms Neville and he half-heartedly commits to patting Seamus’s back. Seamus makes a face and snorts at it, and Neville takes the hand away.

“Yeah, won’t say anything,” Neville mumbles, “but Ginny, she knows about it I think, ah, just so you know.” 

“What?” Seamus says, briefly concerned and Neville fears he’s started a fight, but then Seamus nods and calms himself, “oh, ah, yeah, remember now. Dean and Ginny have been close since the whole . . . datin’ thing. Yeah, yeah he told her.” 

“Well, look, whatever works for you two, I hope you figure it out. And, uh, I’m all good with it, okay?” Neville says. A small grin twitches up on Seamus’s face and Neville warms. His eyes twitch up again to Luna, who is standing alone now, staring up at the rhythmic lights that strobe along the dance floor, “but um, I gotta go see Luna.”

“Yeah, yeah, go get yer chick,” Seamus smirks at him, waving him off. 

“Oh, hello. Padma was-” Luna eases but Neville can’t hold himself from her anymore. Her words fuzz out with a ‘hmph’ as he pulls her into a kiss. He’s guilty he cut her off until she opens her lips for his waiting tongue and falls heavy into him, matching his need in full. 

“Hm, yes,” she says, leaning out of the kiss but staying in the arm he has wrapped around the small of her back, “I’ve been hoping you’d do that at some point tonight.”

“Merlin, Luna, I’ve been thinking about that all night.” Neville takes his free hand to fuss with her hair, tucking a big strand behind her left ear and smoothing down the curl fuzz at her hairline, “So, sorry, you were saying? Padma?”

“She’s still quite upset about it all, but she’s decided to send an owl to Maxwell, the boy she was seeing, tomorrow. They do seem to be a very sweet couple, from what she told me. How bout you? How are things in here?” 

“Weird,” Neville states, leaving it there. Luna nods astutely, as if the one word explains it all. The D.J starts a new song and Luna’s face lights as she bounces up onto the balls of her feet.

“Oh, yes, yes! This song! Neville, dear, we must dance, please.” She’s already grabbed his hand and has gotten them both three or four dangerous steps towards the dance floor.

“Woah, let’s-slow down, Luna. I don’t know if I . . . you don’t even like dancing?” Neville asserts, grinding his feet into the ground. 

“But this is  _ David Bowie _ , who I firmly believe to be the most wonderful muggle to ever exist,” Luna tells him with deadly seriousness.

“Oh.” Neville still doesn’t move himself, but leans a bit more towards Luna’s tug. 

“Please, dance with me,” Luna entreats once more, bottom lip slipping under her teeth, and Neville succumbs. For once, he will let himself jump, full throttle in to her plan, because, as long as he’s following her, it can’t be that bad. 

The song, Luna yells to Neville over the music, is called  _ Golden Years _ . As it goes on and the rhythm gets deeper into itself, Neville becomes more and more glad he’s followed her. She’s hanging off him languidly, swinging and half singing the lyrics, and their body heat and breath are shared. 

“Do you like it?” Luna asks, meaning the song, but all he can think about is her slim hips and how she’s changed her perfume for the season, pine and eucalyptus on her collarbone. 

“Yes,” he says into her ear as the lyric ‘ _ Don't cry my sweet, don't break my heart’  _ plays. Oh fuck, he loves her, he loves her too much. 

The song ends and Neville starts pulling her towards the door. Hermione had taken a ridiculously drunk Ron home a bit earlier and Padma had left almost as soon as Luna was done comforting her on the terrace, so he figures it’s reasonable for them to go. He wants to get her home and rip off every item of her clothes, as carnal and beast-like as that sounds, and just have her all night until he can’t separate the two of them as different bodies. 

“Mistletoe,” Luna says as Neville gets her to the door and squashes his guilt over feeling like a savage. He looks up at the exit door, adorned with a bushel of green and red, “You know, it’s full of nargles.”

“Oh,” Neville replies, disappointed, and Luna breezes a laugh. 

“Oh, fuck it,” Luna says, which shocks Neville into a laugh that barely stops as she slams him with a kiss. Oh, he loves her kisses, always slams and shocks and explosions. 

He will follow these kisses to the ends of the earth. 


	2. Chapter 2

Neville’s plan to join Luna’s travels kicks off during the Christmas holidays before she has even left the country again. 

He and his grandmother spend it as they always do, Christmas Eve with his parents and Christmas Day, a respectable dinner accompanied by them dull thrum of Gran’s holiday record. 

Luna’s holiday seemed equally cosy as far as he can tell from her letter. Fairy dances with her father and aunts around her snow covered gardens, a strict avoidance of mistletoe, and loads of new travel journals as gifts for her. She sends a gift for Neville with her letter, a pink and purple flower that blooms to smell like candy floss, which she says cannot compare to the gnome tooth necklace he scavenged for her.

The plan, which Neville had used the gap in between Christmas and New Years to finalize, is multifaceted. Firstly, he sends off his letter for Pomona Sprout explaining his departure from his plant-tending apprenticeship, for which he admits he has a slight remorse to do so. He’s been sort of instrumental in the reestablishment of the greenhouses at Hogwarts alongside her, and their companionship, which was already strong during his schooling, has blossomed over the days and hours of hands in the soil, regrowing the tools for the education of a new generation. He knows Sprout will understand, though, as he could not see her ever being angry at him for taking a good opportunity. He’ll send her plant samples from wherever Luna and him go.

The next steps bring Neville less woe. He pulls together three duffel bags, one of clothing, one of textbooks on things like magical diseases and herbology across the globe, and the third full of magical disease remedies and money he has converted to currencies throughout Asia, Africa, and the middle East. He readies himself for foriegn germs with a mix of vaccinating potions and shifts his diet to marginally healthier fare. All that is left is for Neville to do is tell Luna that, yes, he will come with her wherever she wants to go, and, of course, tell Gran, but that, with his dread for it, will be waiting until last. 

Near the top of February, after Neville has collected all his packings and gotten nearly to the finish with his last round of potions, Luna owls him to say she is back and that she'd like to meet with him at her house. Neville flutters with nervous, joyous anticipation. He floos to her with a small pack on his back, just in case she is ready to depart the moment he gets there. He is finally, truly in all ways, ready to go.

When Neville arrives at the Lovegood home on an overcast Wednesday afternoon, Xenophilius is there right outside the fireplace, at the window nook, looking morbidly at his front garden. 

“Sir, hello?” Neville calls and Xenophilius turns his head to him in a few jarring movements with a hefty sigh. 

“Neville,” he presses out. Neville shrinks a step away from the glare that is coming off of Xenophilius’s eyes, tightening his fingers around his bicep. 

“Um, well, I’m here to see Luna?”

“Of course you are,” Xenophilius grumbles under his breath, and Neville barely catches it, but it’s enough to unsettle him, his pack slumping down his arm. Xenophilius shakes his head and looks back out the window, “She’s in her room.”

“O-okay, thank you . . . sir,” Neville stares at Xenophilius for another long moment as his frown grows into an almost snarl before he nods to himself and starts to make his way up the spiraling stairs, past Luna’s flowers, which do help remind him why he’s here, despite Xenophilius’s odd anger. Luna and the wonder that surrounds her.

“Luna,” Neville says, the name flowing soft out of him as he opens the door to her room and her familiar smells. Luna smiles down at her notebook that she had been doodling tiny faces surrounded by flower chains in. 

“Hello, love,” she says as she stands and Neville is reminded how long five weeks can be. He wraps an arm around Luna’s boney shoulders and presses her with a kiss. Luna pulls out of it too quickly, sucking in her bottom lip, and Neville mirrors it. The plan seems a bit rushed now that he is here, in a kiss that is less than stellar, fully committed to following a woman who might not want him to be. 

“Um, so how was-”

“Tibet,” Luna finishes, because Neville never remembers. 

“Yes, Tibet.”

“It was alright. Found some possibly magical daffodils,” Luna details, not looking at Neville but rather pulling at loose strings at the hem of her jumper, and Neville has ridiculously miscalculated, because this woman in front of him doesn’t love him, maybe doesn’t even want to be in the same room with him, if her body language is anything to go off of. Still, he pushes on, because he’s here, he can’t just  _ not _ say anything.

“Luna, listen,” he starts, taking her hand and searching around his gut for that Gryffindor bravery. She sighs and rubs a thumb into the calloused skin of his palm, “I’ve been thinking a lot. About you and me. And I know I’ve been dismissive when you talk about travelling, but that’s just because I was so caught up in . . I don’t, what I thought my life was  _ supposed _ to be. But Luna, I really, really love you. It’s changed everything.”

Luna’s fingers close in around Neville’s palm and he licks his lips, once, twice, and stares at his fingertips. It had come out of him so quickly, that ‘I love you’, like breath, like it was meant to happen. 

“You love me?” she says, very soft. Neville nods, and doesn’t need to say it again, just presses back against her hand and looks at her with all the love in him coming out. He wants to shower her with it. Luna breathes it in and she beams, real for the first time that day.

“I love you, too. Quite exceptionally.”

Neville has felt this sort of fiery exhilaration only once before; holding the sword of Gryffindor in his hands, but he knows that this will not be the last time, not if Luna loves him.

“Luna, love, I . . . I,” he stops, kissing her lips and her nose and her cheeks which dimple as she laughs at him, soft and shallow laughs, “I want to travel with you. Wherever you are going next, take me along.” 

Luna’s brow scrunches and a spot of color drains from Neville. Her face is tough and worried as she stumbles back onto sitting on the edge of her bed, and he can’t help but feel he’s misstepped, somehow puzzled her out a little bit wrong, not gotten the Luna-ness of it all and upset her.

“Luna?” he asks and his voice goes to desperation quicker than he would like. Luna locks on his face, and her eyes frighten him.

“Neville, I’m pregnant.”

“No,” Neville says, somewhere in the blur he goes into after Luna has said  _ that _ , his pack falling out of the crook of his elbow and pounding against the floor. Because, well,  _ no _ . He had thought of many eventualities in which his plan would crumble, as he’s want to do with such things, but they were almost all his errors. Doubt had harbored in him of his convictions, he half expected himself to waver on his way over here today, strategized for it, but he has no plan for Luna’s bombshell.

“I’ve only known for about three days. That’s why I left Tibet so early, to tell you and father. I told him yesterday.”

Neville’s cheeks blaze at the memory of Xenophilius’s glare and gut-churning guilt comes over him for knocking up the man’s daughter. And, oh Merlin, it clicks. He’s  _ knocked her up.  _ They’ve really done this.

“Merlin, why did you tell your dad before I got here?” he says into his palms, which have come up to clutch both sides of his face. Luna huffs, but he can’t look at her, not yet.

“I’ve never been good at lying to him, and he asked why I ended my voyage early. Besides, it seemed fair to let him know, as I am living with him for the moment,” she explains, reasonable in her wildness. 

“But . . . but we, the contraceptive spells . . .” 

“Not a certainty. I’ve never been the best at shielding spells. I’m more adept with creative charms,” Luna answers him. Nevile sucks in both his lips and holds his eyes shut. Idiots, they are both such idiots, despite all they did last year, despite what he may have thought of them then.

“Damn it, Luna! Why wouldn’t you say anything? Why would you let me . . . let me . . . Fucking, hell. Luna, why . . .” Neville putters off, voice going rough, and flicks his eyes to Luna. She is quiet, contained, but he can see he’s hit her too hard with his words, from her bunched shoulders and her eyes, not her brilliant silver but a simmering grey. He sighs and falls to her in two slow steps, crouching at her knees, and holding her palm in his.

“Neville, I . . .”

Neville shakes his head, world weary and struck, and presses a kiss to Luna’s knuckles along with the sweat of his upper lip. Luna calms, petting his hair. He has to close his eyes again, resting his head in her lap.

“Sorry, shouldn’t’ve yelled,” Neville says against Luna’s thighs. They are sturdy when the rest of the two of them are not and he doesn't want to move. If he moves, he’s acting and accepting what she’s said and actualizing it.

“Are you . . . feeling alright?” Neville asks in a manner he thinks side steps the pregnancy thing enough.

“Not the best, no. I’ve been nauseated for a steady week. I vomit when I apparate now, which is troublesome in terms of travel,” Luna stops, hand settling on one section of hair and running a few strands between her fingers. Neville cut it shorter a few weeks ago, part of his preparation.

Neville nods against her, and blames himself for all of it. Realizing he’s still nestled in her lap and being comforted like a child he starts to pull up and off her. They are children, he’s aware, now saddled with a child of their own. 

Possibly. The reality of a child, a baby, is not something Neville’s brain can allow him to think up. For now, the space it harbors in his thoughts is an amalgamous fog of stress, loosely tied to Luna and him.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Neville is up and collected, well, as collected as he can manage, and has positioned himself with more distance from Luna, scared she’ll be able to sniff out how shaken he is. She’s not looking the best about it all herself, and he will fall apart if he makes her worse. 

The air about them stagnates with the unsaid for a few silent moments and Neville’s head is going everywhere at once. What does Luna want from him? He can’t read her at all, lost all the Luna interpretation skills he’s gained, and he has no idea whether he should be soothing her or talking her down.

“So, er . . .”

“I haven’t made a choice about keeping it or not yet,” Luna informs, answering the question that Neville had yet to push out of himself. The lack of decision unsettles him, as he had planned on following her lead. He gulps.

“Right. Okay.”

“And you’re the father, Neville. I think it happened during the Christmas holidays.”

He laughs at that, but the laugh is made of caught breath and offers no relief. He hadn’t realized his paternity had been in question. The skin of Luna’s forehead wrinkles, her only tell at aggravation, and Neville mumbles an apology as he shifts himself out of his humor.

“I . . . I thought you could tell me what you think I should do, as, like I’ve told you, it is partially under your claim,” Luna says, half certain in her words and as weak as Neville’s seen her in a long time. It brings back memories he doesn’t want, memories of his loss of her last year that still scrape, and it tugs at him to hold her, soften her hurt until she glows bright and is quipping about Tanzanian skrewts and the like again. But he can’t. Because he can’t help her, not in the way she wants.

“Oh, Luna,” Neville groans. It’s too much to ask, Luna must realize. He has no right, no reason, and no want to handle her and his and  _ their  _ future like this. He entreats her with his eyes, heavy and wrought, to reconsider and Luna squirms to fuss with her notebook again with its pudgy charcoal faces he now understands.

“Well? What do you think?” Luna mumbles.

Neville holds his breath. He’s forgotten, in all his love for her and all the dreams of adventure he’s connected to her, how absolutely selfish she can be.

“Uh, ‘scuse me for a moment.” And Luna’s panicky hurt is not lost on him when he moves in a trance out of the room, without his pack and face covered in a cooling sheen of sweat.

Not being able to stand the horrible shame he’s bound to feel under Xenophilius’s stare and needing urgently to leave this house, Neville apparates right in the hall.

He doesn’t owl Luna and Luna doesn’t owl him in the days following. Neville’s sure Luna must hate him now, her love turned sour the moment he left her, pain and hurt and shock washing over her in that lonely lavender room. 

He’s not even certain she’s still in the country now. Luna, very easily, could have abandoned ship after Neville's departure for some spot deep in the forests of Asia and, without his ‘fatherly’ input, made up her own mind on the pregnancy issue, that life they made already dashed. The idea is disconcerting, but Neville can’t find it in him to overcome his shame and find out if it’s true.

He spends two days not leaving the house much, which his gran chides him for, and reads his copy of  _ The Most Impressive Magical Flowers of Central Asia _ . On the third morning, Gran forces him to make plans.

Neville is glad for it, actually, as his remorse is driving him to tell someone, anyone what has happened and what he’s done. He goes through his list of those applicable. Hermione and Ginny are both back at Hogwarts. Harry is deep into week five of his three month Auror training and unavailable. Dean and Seamus have much too much of their own troubles going on. Ron, who can basically go in and out of the joke shop when he wants and is painfully bored without Hermione round seems the best option. 

They choose a bar on Diagon Alley, newly opened after the war, to meet at so Ron can come right from work. It takes two butterbeers, a mild amount of small talk about Ron’s family and Hermione’s classes, and the question ‘how’s Luna?’ to drive Neville to confession.

“Oh Merlin, she’s up the duff,” Neville groans as his head clatters down onto the stone of the table. He hears the spluttering of Ron around his firewhiskey and takes a second to close his eyes. 

“Sorry, what?”

Neville pulls his head from the table and into his waiting palm.

“She’s knocked up. Up the spout. In a family way. Pregnant,” he rattles. Ron stares at him with a gaped mouth and wide eyes, which he meets with tired ones, and a moment stretches between them before Ron shuts his mouth.

“Are you the father?”

Neville rolls his eyes with a huff.

“Oh, sod off.”

“She did do all the traveling. Foreign lands, foreign men and all. I was just-”

“I’m the father.” Neville is sure of this. Luna, for any faults, is honest. If she’s said he’s the father, he is.

“Shit, mate,” Ron says after a hefty pause. Neville nods, and, Merlin, he’s had a week, so he chugs his entire butterbeer. Ron purses his lips, “oh, wow, um, you’re really . . .”

“Luna’s pregnant,” Neville says once again, for himself, for Ron, for sealing it in, as he licks hoppy foam off his lips.

“Well,” Ron hefts up his glass, which Neville quirks his brow at. Ron shrugs and nudges Neville’s arm, “cheers.”

Neville laughs, deep in his chest and clinks his nearly empty glass against Ron’s.

“Do you know what you’ll be doing with the baby?”

Neville has yet to contextualize their predicament to the point where he can think with terms like ‘baby’. He sucks in his lips and runs his tongue along them, still tasting of sweet butterscotch. When he thinks of babies, he can’t get it to match up with himself, going instead to Teddy, with his pointy chin and hair that is never the same color whenever Harry brings him around. Andromeda, who has a world wise face and a big house full of the sort of things needed for a good childhood, is much more deserving of the parenting job than he is. 

“We haven’t . . . gotten to that level of decision making yet. I, um, shit,” Neville trails and his face warms with lingering guilt, “I actually haven’t talked to Luna since she told me.”

“That’s not great, mate,” Ron says through a grimace, eying Neville. Neville nods against his palm. If he’s lost Luna, he knows he’ll never forgive himself. He barely can imagine how he’ll deal with seeing her again, even if he hasn’t.

“I have no idea what I’m doing.” 

“Um, yeah. Can I offer you a piece of advice, then?” Ron asks and Neville had never thought of Ron for this sort of advising, but he’ll take what he can get. He agrees and Ron swallows a sip of his whiskey, “Well, I know you’re a bit freaked out and all, but, maybe this could be good.”

“Sorry?” Neville scans over Ron, who surely isn’t serious, who must understand that his life has exploded, again for the second time in a little over a year, who has to have figured from knowing Neville that he is not suitable for any decision making this big, and certainly not for a child, who must know that Neville  _ cannot _ see the good in this. 

“I mean, that, ya know, after the war, it’s sort of wonderful to have a baby. It’s like, all this . . . death, and everyone I-we, that everybody lost, and now you’re going to have something good.”

Neville holds his breath and he flashes uncomfortably to the reality of his life last year, to dead bodies and his damn scar that won’t fade away. And Luna, bright and refreshing and healing, who makes it all better. He wants as much of that good as he can get, possibly in baby form, and that is so shocking no words can come out of his mouth. Ron fills the gap.

“Bill and Fleur are having a kid soon, in like three or four months. I’m real excited about it, and Mum’s gone positively bonkers about being a gran. I just thought I’d say, uh, if you wanted to talk to him about it or something,” he says as Neville continues to be frozen in revelation, “you alright?”

“I . . . don’t know,” Neville says around thick breath as he tries to piece together in his head the drawings in Luna’s sketchbook, chubby-cheeked babies. The image is starting to feel less overwhelming, “I think I need to figure this out.” 

Ron smiles, his mouth glinting to the left with teeth poking out as he sips down some more firewhiskey. 

“Brilliant. Let me know how it goes, mate.”

Neville goes home changed and dreams good dreams of a child with blonde curls who leaves joy behind them in every step.

When Neville wakes up, because it is a Saturday and he is a creature of habit, he makes his way out to the Hogwarts greenhouses. 

“Neville!” Professor Sprouts exclaims as he pushes into the glass structure, tugging scratched leather gloves over his palms, “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, I always come in on Saturdays and Sundays, Professor.”

“I received the resignation letter a few days ago. I had assumed that was effective immediately.” 

“Oh, um, yeah that . . .” Neville sighs, and a hardly acknowledged remorse settles on him, “my situation has changed, actually. Is the apprenticeship . . . still available for me?”

Sprout scans Neville with her lips in a purse and Neville gulps as she sees right through him. She nods after a minute and Neville rubs at his flushed cheeks. She gestures over to the Shrivelg pots and Neville gets to work on repotting the bigger ones. 

Part of the appeal of Herbology to him has always been the feel of his hands deep in soil. Soil is life-bringing, rich and heartily earthy, and Neville has always found satisfaction in placing a plant, roots at the ready, into a new pot with a base of dirt and, once it’s good and settled, mounding soil into a hill around the sprout, sheltering it into its new home. It’s quite a beautiful process to assist in, and, also, he’s good at it. When it comes to plants, he can bring an Alihostry bud from sapling to tree a million times over. He knows the tricks, how too much sun can sour soil, what to do when bugs dig into the green and purple leaves, how to rub its bark in the right ways to send its magic sparking up out through its stems. Herbology, unlike Potions, unlike Defense Against the Dark Arts, unlike  _ Luna, _ he understands.

“Neville?” Professor Sprout says and Neville turns to her as he pulls his hands out from under a paticularly wrinkly Shrivelg bulb, wiping them on his apron. 

“Yes, Professor?”

“Are you sure about this? I am certainly grateful for the help, and the Wiggentrees do love you, but in your letter, you seemed so excited for these travels, and so ready to go. I can’t help but wonder if this is the right path,” Sprout says, her lips back in that disapproving, uncertain purse. Neville’s brow bunches and he gets out of her stare by poking around in a mound of dirt. 

“Well, I . . . w-was quite excited, yeah, but I just . . . it didn’t work out,” Neville mumble-explains, the remorse weighty in his chest, because, despite his fears, he was thrilled to travel with Luna. It made him feel like he was brave, that he was an adult who had control of his own life, something he really, really needed after seventeen years of his gran’s aggressive parenting and an awful year trying desperately to have some sort of agency under a massively corrupt power. However, looking at a particularly small sapling over in the corner and thinking over his own little, newly planted sapling, he knows that there are other, possibly more important aspects to being an adult, “I need a job.”

“Well!” Sprout huffs and Neville breaks from his fuzz with flushed embarrassment over his abruptness. 

“Er, sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . I just really, um, I need to get a job.”

“Well, I could talk to Headmistress McGonagall, I suppose. You do have the experience, as I’ve seen. Maybe start you with just the second and third years. I do want to retire at some point soon,” Sprout says, and Neville, despite his joy over employment, gasps lightly. She chuckles low in her gut, “Oh, come on now, I am getting into old age, don’t sniffle about it. However, if I may ask, what is the hurry for employment? Augusta hounding you, boy?”

“No . . .” Neville nibbles at his bottom lip and flicks his glance over to Professor Sprout, objectively one of his favorite parts of his Hogwarts education and someone he trusts like family, “I . . . I’m going to be a father, I think.”

“Oh!” Sprout says and her face visibly pales. There is a readable struggle of disappointment, surprise, and a muddled happiness on her before she says, “Congratulations?”

Neville rocks on his feet and, after a moment of deliberation, accepts. 

After another hour deep in dirt, Sprout dismisses him and he takes advantage of the Saturday vacancy to wander the halls. 

Shadows of memories linger everywhere Neville looks. In an alcove jutting out of the building, Fred and George are peddling their Pucking Pastiles and Nosebleed Nougats, laughing with arms slung around each so securely they look literally linked, while some tiny first year is passing of a galleon to them. Lavender, alive and completely unscathed, is holding up in a stairwell and bemoaning her woes to Pavarti. 

Neville catches himself as it overwhelms him, huffing in a breath as he presses back against the stone-carved wall, slowly working back to calm. The fading images of those he lost sting reopened wounds, but it’s good, too, nostalgic, and he’d much rather have them sticking around this place than Snape and the Carrows and all his other scars, physical and otherwise. 

“Neville!” Hermione says as she comes running up to him, hair twisted up into a fuzz of bun atop her head as she looks at him with the same exasperated, urgent expression she’s had since she was eleven. Maybe, just possibly, the war has left this brilliant girl intact. Neville smiles.

“Hermione, how-”

“You missed our lunch,” she informs. Neville has had an ongoing, loosely set lunch date with Ginny and/or Hermione on non-Hogsmeade Saturdays, but, well, he hasn’t been in the right mind to keep dates. 

“Er, yeah, sorry. It slipped my mind.” 

Hermione’s brow wrinkles as she looks down to her feet, a nervous pattern playing out in her tapping fingers. When she catches Neville watching it, she brings her hands to her side.

“That’s alright. I’ve gotten some food together for us. Want to eat in the common room?” she says in a rush, not much of a question but rather an order. Confused, he follows her as she already makes her way towards Gryfinndor tower. She lets them in with the password  _ Halitus Ignis _ , which he would have never remembered, and they are greeted by ornate and ancient furniture in an empty room, all lit by the brick fireplace.

“Where’s Ginny?” Neville asks as Hermione sits him down on the couch and hands him a plate with a ham sandwich and crisps. 

“Oh, Ginny? She’s at Quidditch practice. Rumor has it recruiters are coming for the last few games of the season, so they’ve all gotten quite serious about it,” she says and Neville feels a wash of pride to think of Ginny being recruited for a team. She’s been training to be a Holyhead Harpie since she was old enough to fly, it seems. Hermione huffs quickly and Neville stares at her. She bites her lip, “Also, erm . . . Ron told me about your situation with Luna.”

“Oh,” Neville says, a bit warm under his cheeks. 

“About the . . .  _ pregnancy _ .”

“Yeah, um, I assumed.”

Hermione’s eyes go into frantic sympathy for a moment, before her brow fixes itself into a determined quirk and she starts up with a dangerous level of certainty behind her steps.

“So I’ve been doing some research for you,” she says, and of course she has, “and I’ve gotten you a few pamphlets on the processes, where to go, which type of Healers to see.”

Neville skims over the fronts of the pamphlets she has produced out her bag and handed to him. They outline the process of termination; a timeline of appointments, a guide to the potions used and their side effects, and a multifaceted booklet for Luna’s wellbeing after. He’s surprised Hermione’s gone through the effort to gather all this, as he had assumed she was rather annoyed by Luna, but this surprise does little to make the information more palatable. For having been tossing the idea around his head as a possibility in the vaguest senses, the actual written-out reality of terminating leaves him with a striking sense of discomfort. 

“I could help you set the appointment with the Healer, if you want. Unless Luna wants to do it herself. Or she . . . she could owl me, maybe? Would that be best?” Hermione says as Neville places the pamphlets on to the table gently a distance away from him. 

“I . . . I, thank you, Hermione, so much, really, but . . . I don’t think we are gonna do this.”

“What?” Hermione puts down her salad and stares at Neville with indignant eyes. He feels strangely guilty over her upset, despite it being none of her business, but he persists. 

“Yeah, um, basically, I’ve been maybe thinking about keeping it?” Neville squeaks. Hermione goes more red in her face. 

“No! That is ridiculous. Neville, Luna is seventeen!” 

“She’ll be eighteen in two weeks,” he mumbles uselessly to which Hermione shakes her head. She resettles herself on the couch, back straight, legs folded neatly, eyes certain and shoulders set. 

“Look, I know that you’re in love and that can be very exciting, can make you want to do inane things like this, but, I mean, you must see this is not the time!” Hermione says, talking with her hands gesturing in fast, aggressive movements. Neville’s lip quirks down at her condescension, which has always been laid thick on him but irritates him even further now. She starts again even as he puffs a groan, “Our lives can all start now, really start, without Voldemort and a war and terror at every turn. That’s why I’m back here, getting my NEWTs and setting up an excellent platform for a career. I’m establishing myself. I have a plan, and you should, too, Neville! And it should not involve being a teenaged father.”

A steady stream of vitriol stocks up in Neville, for she has stepped too far this time. He has his plans, and they are living his own life, with Luna and Herbology, and, well, maybe if it comes with Luna, a child, too. They are just as wonderful as whatever ministry aspirations Hermione has been plotting since she found out she was a witch. 

“Actually, I’ve just gotten a potential job here. From Sprout. Just so you know. And-and, I don’t much appreciate the assumption that I’m some sort of lover boy-”

“Sorry, I-Ron and I had a pregnancy scare,” Hermione winces out. Neville’s anger stills and he turns to her as she blows out her cheeks, eyes shut. She releases a large puff of air and he gives her a moment to collect herself, “It was a month or so before school started, August, and for a week I thought that I . . . and the whole time, I’m just thinking, I have goals, I’m not going to be Ronald Weasley’s housewife at eighteen! And then, I wasn’t. But, still, it was awful and it showed me I’m absolutely not ready for a child. And-and I thought you might be feeling the same.”

“Hermione . . .” Neville eases, dripped clean of his anger. Hermione shakes the outburst off her shoulders and, in less than a minute, is herself again.

“Well, all I’m saying is that you have a lot to consider, about your preparation for this, because we are still very young.”

Neville nods, turning from Hermione to the room. Caught up in her whirlwind, he hadn’t taken the time to fully take stock of the room yet. He hadn’t been in it since the few days after the battle, during which he slept in his old dorm bed, persistently didn’t cry, and begged to hear anything from his Gran soon, whom he had still not located. There was no time to savor this place then. This place which, when he gets down to it,  _ is _ his childhood. This fireplace had kept a scared and lonely Neville warm when he was twelve and still friendless, with nothing to do on a Friday night but sit here and write out his  _ History of Magic _ scrolls. He had been taught chess by Ron on the couch, developed painful crushes on people out of his league in that loveseat, helped Ginny with her Herbology work on this tapestry of a carpet, all of it in this red and gold nest. This room housed his youth, and his heart burns looking at it with the same fire in the fireplace in front of him; steady, well known, and comfortable. 

He loved his youth because of this room, but, even if its shadow still hangs from the rafters and clings to the upholstery, his childhood had been on its way out since his visit to the Department of Mysteries. Staring into the heart of the fire’s crackling flames as Hermione crunches on her salad behind him, Neville makes his final peace with leaving his childhood to stay in this tower.

Neville, so urgently certain of what he needs to tell Luna, leaves his lunch with Hermione, heads into Hogsmeade, and apparates to the Lovegood house then and there, with the dirt of the greenhouses still smudging his shirt. 

“Sir, is Luna-” Neville shoots the second he comes tumbling through the door out of breath and catches eyes with Xenophilius, who should really remember to lock his doors.

“You have quite the nerve, Longbottom, to show up here after how you’ve been treating my Lune,” Xenophilius spats at Neville. Neville sighs, for he feels awful and remorseful and stupid and quite, quite, in the wrong, but, he needs to see her.

“I know, I know that I’ve messed things up rightly, but I . . . please, Mr. Lovegood, I have to talk to your daughter. I’ve got to apologize, please.”

Xenophilius irons out Neville with his stare and Neville stays still for the appraisal, for he know he deserves it, and he wants to be on Xenophilius’s good side, for if Luna and him are really going through with this, her father should probably like him. After a hefty moment of tight-lipped apprehension, Xenophilius sighs into muted sadness.

“She . . . she’s in the back garden, keeping the snow away from the purple roses. She doesn’t show it, but . . . you-you’ve upset her a great deal, I believe, with your leaving. She’s not well, what with the . . . with the . . .” he teters, and the words, the fact of Luna’s pregnancy, don’t make it out of his mouth. Neville’s heart does a plummeting fall, and he seizes with fear, wishing to dart from Luna’s pain, but he pushes on.

“I’m sorry for that. And, er, I-I’m sorry to you, too,” Neville says. Xenophilius smiles in a morosely pitiful way. He pats Neville’s arm with almost no pressure.

“Please, make my little girl better for me,” he murmurs lowly, and Neville frowns as Xenophilius’s eyes droop back into looking like that of a battered and bruised man who barely survived a war. 

“Yes, sir.” 

Luna is wearing thick, woolen robes over star patterned pajama pants and a flowing blue blouse.

“Neville, hello,” she says with a forced smile, still petting at her roses. His shoulders fall and he gulps up some courage. 

“Luna, Merlin, I . . . I’m so sorry I-”

“No matter. It’s perfectly fine,” she mumbles.

“No, no, look, I know I was awful to you. And I was scared, and I thought I was done running from my problems, but I was just . . . I-I have no excuses. I’m never going to do that again, I promise.”

“That’s good,” Luna’s smile lifts, earnestly this time, “I’ve developed quite the craving for toothpaste flavored Bertie Botts. Isn’t that interesting?”

Neville’s nerves tingle at the mention of her pregnancy, and the idea of their child, however consciously or not at this stage, making Luna eat unnatural candies is the last sign he needs to be really truly sure with his decision.

“I think, and, uh-uh, this might be a bit mad, but, I-I think we should keep the baby, Luna, let’s do it.”

Luna smiles after a moment, which Neville struggles to distinguish between real or pushed on for his benefit.

“That’s what I was thinking, too,” she says, and Neville, for the first time ever, wonders if she is really giving him the truth, but, his adrenaline is running thin and he has missed her, so, with a warm sigh, he presses her into a kiss. 

He hopes she won’t change her mind.

  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review!!!

Neville’s gran, as he had expected, was significantly less than pleased with him. 

He hadn’t taken Luna when he told her, as Augusta had made no secret of the fact that she found Luna to be an unsatisfactory option for Neville’s romantic attentions. So, luckily, Luna had gotten the worst of his gran through his softening filter later that night when she met him at Seamus’s flat, where Neville found himself staying when Gran kicked him out. 

His gran had done it in a burst of her fiery and passionate anger, which Neville didn’t hear much in his direction, more so for the wrong sort of people, the Death Eater sort, or, on occasion, a daft shopkeeper. In the spew of her vitriol she had given Neville upon hearing she would be a great-grandmother, she had told him that if he was not going to act like a true Longbottom man, he should get out of the Longbottom Manor. And so he did.

It didn’t last long. After one night of eating Indian takeaway on Seamus’s leather couch, Dean there, too, and commiserating with Luna on the futon in the deep dark of the living room, Augusta came to collect him.

“I’m sorry,” Augusta had said tightly as Neville unpacked his duffel. He nodded in a small jerk. Frankly, he didn’t really know if he’d forgiven her for it, but he was in no mood to discuss and fight this with her. He doubted her feelings on Luna had changed in a day, even if her feelings on kicking him out had. 

“It’s fine.”

“I . . . . it was only a shock to hear you would become a father so young. I should have never . . . it was awful to tell you to leave, Neville, I am aware of this. But I was surprised, and then, to hear it was the Lovegood girl, not someone like Ginerva Weasley, at least, or someone-”

“Gran, stop it,” Neville silenced, for he wouldn’t be sentenced to another rant on the many reasons Luna was unfit. Augusta had sighed, in the way she did, a pursed and curt sound, biting her tongue but just barely. 

“Well, then,” she crossed the room in perfect strides, “if you two really mean to go through with this, you’ll have to marry her.”

The order has been on Neville’s mind, recurrently, since Augusta issued it. Marriage hadn’t been a consideration for him on his course with Luna, because, well, they are barely adults yet. He hardly could think a year ahead in terms of plans, not even considering a lifetime. But, it’s probably the right thing to do, as in the responsible and approvable course of action now that Neville’s gotten his girlfriend pregnant. And he wouldn’t mind marrying Luna, whom he loves through all of this, any changes withstanding, a love with a beating pulse. A proposal; it’s what Gran wants and likely what Xenophilius is expecting of him, too. Does Luna want that? He wonders if she’s waiting for it, and that he's already missed the mark by not giving her one yet. To be fully honest, he has no idea. He can’t tell at all what Luna wants lately. 

Neville thinks she is happy and settled with the choice they’ve made, though not certain. Luna is in a state of ricochet with her emotions. She dips into wonder and joy, occasionally. In moments, Neville will catch her when he thinks he’s not supposed to and she will be in a watery-eyed embrace with her stomach, which floor him with too much to feel in one sitting. Sometimes, now, she even tells him about her mother, who she so rarely mentions upon, and says how this is how she must have felt when she was pregnant, an untouchable goddess of life-bringing. She says that she feels closer to her mum than ever. These moments are beautiful and Neville holds them close to his heart, but they are always preceded or followed by Luna going somewhere in her head he can’t reach her, where she won’t even broach the fact of her pregnancy, and, worse, where she doesn’t answer owls and he has to find out from her father that she’s been painting for two days straight in her room, hardly eating, hardly sleeping. Those moments are there, too. 

Today, however, is one of their good days, which are growing, Neville notes, assuredly growing with each week that passes to outnumber their upsetting counterparts. Today is the tail end of March, spring is here in the air and in the trees, Luna is twelve weeks along, and today she is very happy for that fact. 

“I’m so wonderfully happy to see Ginny today,” Luna beams as they press down the cobblestones of Hogsmeade shoulder to shoulder, en route to a gathering of the summer group at the Three Broomsticks. It’s a lucky Saturday, one where Harry’s Auror training, Hermione’s Head Girl hours, and Ginny’s practices line up enough to allow them to meet. 

Ginny is as exuberant as Luna when they come through the door. She squeals Luna up into a hug, one that makes up for every one they didn’t get in the months since they’ve seen each other, and they briefly become one giddy circle of fiery red and silvery blonde hair.

“Look at you!” Ginny exclaims, meaning Luna’s stomach. It’s not much yet, but Luna’s frame is so slim that there is no room to hide anything. Luna laughs through a grin, one palm slipping down across her stomach. Luna had written Ginny a bit ago to tell her about the pregnancy, which Ginny had quickly followed with a series of frantic owls back. Most everyone knew now, shockingly quickly. It’s been a bit of a slap from reality, if Neville is honest. 

“Oi, here, on me,” Harry presses a dark beer into Neville’s hand, looking at him with a cautious smile. It’s one Neville sees a lot now, one of unsureness on how to handle him and Luna. The idea of parenthood is so far off and foreign to most of their friends, worlds away from their experiences. Neville still feels worlds away from it, too, being a dad, some days, but he’d like to think he’s getting closer to the concept, at least. 

“Thanks,” he says as he raises the drink to Harry. They find a low, dark wood table and Ginny pulls her chair snug to Luna’s. 

“Neville, sit here!” Ginny orders, patting the seat on her other side. Neville takes it, beer in hand, and Luna gives him a lazy smile. Warm in his chest from it, he reaches behind Ginny’s chair to grab a hold of Luna’s hand. Ginny groans with a smirk, “oh, Merlin, you two, that’s disgustingly cute. Enough.” 

Neville withdraws his hand slowly, stopping to wrap one of his thick fingers around Luna’s slender one, and turns to Ginny with his dewy grin still stretching across his face. 

“You’re one to talk, with you and Harry. You were practically glued to each other when we came in,” he nudges and Ginny’s eyes flick up and away from him.

“Well, I only see him about once a month now. It’s justified. You two have no excuse,” Ginny again puts her attention on Luna, “So, anyways, how are you doing? Still, er, vomiting, or is that part over now? Fleur’s been having fainting spells, though that’s probably just her being dramatic.”

“Hm, no fainting, no. And not too much vomiting anymore. I’m mostly hungry now,” Luna mumbles.

“When are you due, by the way?” Hermione chirps in, her lips creasing each other, and Neville keeps a close eye on her as she speaks to Luna. He’s sure she still is against their plan, as Hermione never wavers on her convictions without overwhelming cause, and he feels compelled to block any of her judgy comments to Luna about it. 

“Hm? Oh, late summer, at some point? I suppose we will see,” Luna says with a breezy chuckle. Hermione and Ginny exchange looks between the two of them and Neville jitters up in his seat, a clambering motion. 

“She’s due September 20th. So, er, yeah, late summer.” Neville had asked for her due date at Luna’s second Healer appointment-he had missed her first-and has had it marked into his calendar since. He’ll remember to have Luna do the same, though he doesn’t think she owns a consistent calendar. A moment of awkward tension passes between them all and Harry breaks it.

“So, I’ve been asked by some Ministry people to tell you all that there will be a ceremony at Hogwarts on the one year anniversay of the battle, which I have been worked into giving a speech at. I’m also supposed to let you know you will all be considered honored guests, as in you have to stand up on the stage with me. Just giving fair warning,” he says with a heavy sigh. 

“Bloody hell, I need to be pissed for that,” Ron mutters and Harry and Ginny both give half-raises of their glasses to the notion.

“Fuckin’ right,” Harry says and slurps up some of his Butterbeer up. Neville feels inclined to agree with the sentiment. There’s much to celebrate, assuredly, the world is free again, but that doesn’t mean holding a ceremony of honor for the battle on what is essentially the gravesite of tens of people sits right. It doesn’t mean it won’t be sending the six of them right back to a year ago, back to the end and the start of their world. Neville wants to be drunk for it, but, maybe not, for Luna’s sake. 

“I’m quite ravenous. I think I’ll go order some pie. Meat pie sounds very lovely. Excuse me,” Luna sighs. She rises and floats off towards the bar. Ginny huffs half a laugh. 

“Right, then,” she says.

“She has been, um, hungry lately. And . . . a bit scatterbrained,” Neville covers with a chuckle. Ginny’s smile fades as Luna settles on a bar stool and Neville’s brow furrows. Ginny delivers a sudden smack to his arm, which he pulls back quickly.

“Oi!”

“You’ve gotten my best friend pregnant, you git!” Ginny hisses. Neville’s lip dips into a frown as he rubs a palm across his skin. The accusation feels unfounded and surprising, as he would actually say, given the circumstances, he’s being relatively good about it, with actively working towards getting a job, making sure he knows when all the healer appointments are, and trying his best not to have Xenophilius or Gran get too miffed at him. 

“You’re mad at me?” Neville checks. 

“She’s been mad at you since she got the owl,” Harry says, sympathetic to Neville, though, not enough, Neville notes, to stop from smirking.

“Yeah, right furious,” Ron adds. Neville sighs, looking at Hermione, who just shrugs. She agrees with Ginny, he’s sure. Ginny wavers from her anger and gives him a pitying half-smile.

“I’m not  _ furious _ , and to be honest, I’m not really mad at you. Sorry for hitting you by the way,” Ginny breezes a laugh, a brief respite, “It’s more that I’m worried about the situation, and Luna’s readiness. I love her, and she’s amazing in so many ways, but, you know, er, parenting is-”

“Luna is-she’s doing great, alright? She’s very excited to be a mum. We are . . . um, getting along just fine, with preparation and all,” Neville says, a blatant sugar coating of the situation, though he justifies it to himself with the assertion that while, from an outside view point, Luna’s mood fluctuations might be concerning, they’ve got this handled, for the most part. He’s sure it’s all heading for good, he wants it badly to be heading for good. He wishes they would all give Luna time to get there. 

Ginny’s mouth twists, unbelieving, but Luna is back at the table with her meat pie before anyone can question him more. 

“It’s chicken and mushroom,” Luna informs as she dives her fork through the crust. 

“Lovely,” says Neville with an indignant tone of joy to his voice, for the group’s sake and their doubt in him. 

“Are you excited for today?” Hermione asks, close to Ron’s arm. 

She means, of course, his interview with McGonagall for the assistant professorship. Professor Sprout had sent him an owl for the time a week ago, having worked her way into getting him the chance. Neville is young to be considered for a position, as Sprout let him know. Most people looking to work at Hogwarts are at least in their mid-twenties, because a certain level of experience in the world as well as an earned maturity is expected. However, Sprout had said that his work in her greenhouses and his ‘valor in time of war’ has allowed him an exception. He’s quite certain, though, it won’t be enough alone to earn him the job.

“He’s bloody frightened, I’m sure. I don’t envy you, interviewing with McGonagall. That woman still terrifies me,” Ron answers for him, which is, well, not wrong. Neville is unsure if he’s more worried about getting the position or disappointing his former Head of House. Hermione purses her lips at Ron before giving Neville a helpful smile.

“Don’t listen to him. I think you should feel good about your chances, Neville.”

“Thanks,” Neville says quietly, nervous still, no matter what Hermione offers. Luna raises from her pie with an absent minded beam of a grin. 

“Neville’s very good at Herbology. He does lovely renderings of plants in his journals. Have any of you seen them?”

Neville flushes red at the mention of his drawings. They are personal to him, both to create and to share, which, when he thinks about it, he has only done with Sprout and Luna. 

“Ha, er, they’re nothing special. Just some sketches,” he covers. Luna gives him a quizzical look and he lowers his head. 

“They’re quite special, actually. I’ve been thinking about asking to publish some in the art section of the Quibbler.”

Neville’s head peeps up at that. Again, he is embarrassed, but, under that, heartened to know Luna had appreciated his little nothing drawings enough to think to circulate them. He smiles at her, tiny but present.

“Let’s take a walk,” Luna says to Neville quietly as she finishes up her pie. The conversation has become more segmented and Ginny has moved her chair next to Harry’s, so he nods and follows Luna up and out of the bar. 

“Are you alright?” Neville asks after a silent minute of walking the street and staring in shop windows. Luna pauses in front of a display of neon evening robes at Gladrags, pulling at the assortment of rings she has on her fingers. 

“Is it horribly terrible I didn’t know my due date?” Her eyes have gone the smallest touch watery at her edges and Neville’s throat tightens. Crying shouldn’t rattle himself so much, as it is a staple of most pregnancies, but Luna, well, it’s different. He’s hardly ever seen her cry before, which, considering everything, is rather shocking in itself. He wraps her up in his arms until she is pressed straight to the center of his chest. 

“No, no, Luna, it’s . . .you know it now, right?” Neville says and she nods against him. She doesn’t make a move to leave his arms, so he stays still, linking around her better. 

“I get nervous about it all, sometimes,” Luna says, muffled. They both take a breath in together before Luna separates from Neville. She reassembles her smile and looks up at Neville with her dimples on show. 

“I’m very proud of you, you know, for pursuing this job. It’s admirable,” Luna tells Neville. He smiles at her, tense, and presses her with a kiss. 

“I really need this to go well,” Neville says against her scalp. He feels her skin crinkle on her forehead and figures she must know why, that his comment has hit her once again with how imminent their need is to grow up. 

“It will,” Luna says with a press to their linked hands, “Ginny and I will meet you back at the pub afterwards.”

When Neville makes his way to the Hogwarts grounds, McGonagall is waiting for him at the front gates with her hands folded primly in front of herself. 

“Mr. Longbottom, good to see you.”

“Prof-Headmistress,” he corrects himself.

“It’s such a nice day. I thought we might enjoy conducting this interview outside on the grounds,” she says. Neville nods, swallowing down his own jittery tension, and follows her as she turns down a hallway and presses on. 

It is a very nice day, it’s true, though Neville can’t really focus on it. He is busy planning and replanning what he’ll say to sell himself, to convince McGonagall he’s something more than the bumbling and meek oaf he was in her classes. He can’t help but remember that he wasn’t even able to get to her NEWT level Transfiguration. 

“And as I am sure you remember, one of our main expectations of our professors is to prepare students for their end of year exams and, in turn, for their classes of the following year. For this reason, you must be familiar with the exam requirements of years two and three,” McGonagall drawls as they pass by a large tree in the quad, which Neville can identify as an alder and is wondering if it would be relevant to mention. 

“Second years have Mandrakes, Shrivelfigs, and plant pruning. Third years have Puffapods and plant identification,” he says, straight from reviewing his own school notes for hours and hours the past few days. McGonagall stops in her path and turns over her shoulder to him with a proud tilt to her lips.

“That is quite right.”

Relief untightens Neville’s chest, and he is somehow still as eager to please his old professor as when he was her student. 

“Also, from personal experience, I found that learning plant temperaments in the third year could be helpful for fourth year Herbology,” he adds, boldly, for this is not standard. He himself had learned it on his own third year, which had set him ahead, while others ended up covered in bubotuber pus. He sucks in a lip as McGonagall considers this, ready to damn himself for overstepping, for thinking he knew nearly enough to offer an opinion out on matters like the way Hogwarts is run, but, again, she looks pleased.

“That is very astute, Longbottom. You may want to note that for future lesson plans,” she says and Neville’s fingers clutch tightly around his wrist, for that felt like a sign of hope. She clears her throat and he steadies his heart, “Let’s move into my office.”

The office has gone through an edit since Snape’s tenure, dark curtains and murky ingredient bottles now replaced with a framed Scottish flag and mounted artifacts. Items that had once belonged to Dumbledore, likely willed to McGonagall. As they move to her desk, Neville can see the alcove behind her is decorated with photos, mostly of her past students. Neville is immensely honored to find himself up there, in a portrait with Seamus and Luna, immediately following the battle, still dirty and bloody as could be, but grins wide and bright. There are a few dotted pictures of her with younger children, her nieces and nephews he assumes, and the smallest couple of a man with curly brown hair and a small, subtle smirk. Neville finds it inappropriate to linger on those ones. 

“Well,” McGonagall hums as she collects the papers he has provided for her, “recommendations from Professors Sprout and Flitwick, Honorary O’s on your Herbology, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWTs, and a stellar performance in Hogwarts own greenhouses. This is an excellent series of qualifications here.”

“T-thank you, Headmistress,” Neville says, though he still can’t help but feel it inadequate. He hasn’t had a paying job yet, no record of work, nothing to show him truly capable.

“And I suppose I need not ask about your leadership qualifications,” she says. Neville’s head bobs up, worried he has been so pitifully awkward in this interview that she’d written him off in the leadership department.

“Huh?” he huffs out. McGonagall’s forehead folds and her lips quirk tightly.

“I’m speaking of last year, Mr. Longbottom, with the resistance. Such great action does not go unnoticed, certainly not by myself nor your other professors.”

“Oh.” Neville’s chest falls and he is red across his nose. He is proud, in a way, of his actions during war time, definitely proud of their results, but it feels wrong to be given any special treatment for it. He had been offered an Auror position by Kingsley in the fall without NEWTs, just as Harry and Ron had, and he turned it down for the same sort of wrongness. For the fact that he could fight when he shut his brain off, when he could die, his best friends could die if he didn’t, but that didn’t mean he could do it every day. It wasn’t a brilliant leadership strategy on his part, as that was always more Ginny’s forte, or any great will to fight that made last year what it was. It was just him, getting himself and those he loved from one day to the next, and trying to find a way out. He wants no honors for that. McGonagall sighs and her eyes soften into a grandmotherly sort of care.

“I know you may not think of what you did as much, but it was bravery, plain and simple. It was one of the truest presentations of the aims of Gryffindor house I have seen. You should not feel guilty to have pride in that fact,” she assures, and Neville knows, of course, that she is earnest and right, but he still can’t settle on winning a job for dumb luck and not dying in battle.

“I . . . I am proud, I really am. But, I want to not have it be all of who I am. I . . .” he trails, and McGonagall is staring at him, waiting for him to finish, waiting for a point. He stares into his own lap, racking his brain for the good in him. He comes to Luna and her words today and the feeling he gets around her that he is something more than just a war hero. Scrambling, he opens his backpack and pulls out a green leather journal, dropping it in front of McGonagall’s knitted hands. 

“Here. I-this journal, I keep a record of all the plants I study and sketch them. This is . . . it’s what I’m good at doing.”

She picks up the book in delicate motion and turns the pages with the very tips of her fingers. A bemused expression crosses her face.

“These are excellent, although, I can’t help but wonder how these little fairies made their way in.” McGonagall turns the book to him which, indeed, does have a number of small and enormous eyed fairies flitting through the margins. Neville’s breath catches. He should watch Luna more carefully with these books. 

“Oh, so sorry, Luna draws-I, sorry,” he reaches out for the book and McGonagall passes it back. He stuffs it into his backpack with the others, “but, fairies aside, I feel this shows that I’m cut out for this, right? I love Herbology, and all these plants in here, and I know I’d love to teach others about them.”

Passion is welling in Neville alarmingly fast and his words are true. He loves these plants, loves every tiny bloom and every reaching oak, He wants his life, and Luna’s life, and their eventual child’s life to be filled with herbs and flowers and trees. He wants others to love them like him. Merlin, he wants this job with his life. 

“I find that to be a good motivator in teaching as well, Longbottom, loving one’s subject,” McGonagall says, as close to beaming as he’s seen her. He warms from inside out, feeling like he’s gotten a gold star.

“Headmistress, I would be so honored and willing to be given the chance to work at this school,” Neville rushes. She nods.

“Well, I can’t offer you the job today, but I would say that your chances are fair,” she says, “If you are accepted, will you be considering living on school property? There are some rooms I could ready for you.”

“Er,” Neville squeaks, and his wave of passion mellows. He’s mostly certain that they don’t allow babies in the Hogwarts dorms, and he’s not sure Luna would fancy living here again either, too much history. That is, if Luna and the baby will live with him. They haven’t discussed that yet, “I’m not sure, exactly. There are some circumstances that may make that . . . hard. Will that be a problem?” 

McGonagall hesitates. 

“I should tell you that Pomona confided in me what you told her about you and Ms. Lovegood,” she says, shifting herself in her large seat, and Neville goes a bit red, feeling like he’s once again confessing to his gran. McGonagall clears her throat and resettles, “so, I do understand that you may not be able to stay at the school. There are homes in Hogsmeade, in the village, of course, but you would need to be relatively close to the school, still.”

“I . . . I’ll make sure to look into it,” Neville says, though, again, he’s unsure, for Luna is a wild card, and assuring that they will be anywhere for certain in six months is risky to do. All he knows is there will be a baby, one way or another. 

McGonagall raises up and takes small strides to Neville. His breath catches in surprise as she places a thin but sturdy hand on his shoulder. 

“I do truly hope the best for you, two, whatever that may be,” she says softly, before pulling her hand back to its place in front of her waist. She recollects into a more professional stance, “Well, I’ll be letting you know within the next few weeks about my decision on your hiring.”

Neville nods and takes the cue to stand and ready himself to leave. He pulls his backpack up onto his shoulders and turns towards the staircase. As he turns back, McGonagall issues him a small grin, all the hint Neville needs. He thinks he might have gotten this job.

  
  



End file.
